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Zoe Nicholson - Love What You Eat Dietitian

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Zoe Nicholson - Love What You Eat Dietitian

Love What You Eat dietitians use The Non-Diet Approach and Intuitive Eating to help you be free from dieting.

20+years healing relationships with food & body
NonDiet, Size Inclusive Health, IntuitiveEating, Eating Disorders, Food intolerance, Gut Isdues
Do need help with your relationship with food?
👇Text us today to book your consult
0419585415 We show you how to nurture a healthy relationship with food and your body. Our dietitians love food and we are passionate about helping others rediscover the pleasure of food and eating! Please visit www.lovewhatyoueat.com.au to learn more about how we can help you.

29/09/2025

Unless you have a true food allergy or medical reason to avoid certain food (eg Coeliac and gluten), there is most likely no food you need to avoid long-term to take of your health.

For many people, being told they must avoid certain food creates a level of distress around food and eating that can be damaging to health long-term. This can happen on an emotional, social, spiritual (living life according to values) and physical level.

If avoiding food means avoiding social interactions, tension with loved ones or missing out on new experiences, the impact this has on long-term health is far greater than a specific food (or nutrient).

Many people will end up emotionally eating and/or over-eating (or binge eating) the very food they’ve been to limit/avoid. Not only could this cause a short-term health impact, this leads to increased shame around food and body. Shame is an independent risk factor for health, including increased metabolic risk factors.

You can learn much more about all of this with a size inclusive-non diet approach to health.

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

24/09/2025

Too often I hear stories from clients where someone has assumed they aren’t active, or they must eat loads of sweets without even asking what it is they already do (or don’t do).

There are also the times people get congratulated for exercising or eating a salad as though it’s something they’ve just started because they’re in a bigger body, even though they’ve been doing it for years.

If you find yourself judging someone based on their size, this doesn’t make you a bad person, this is the way we’re all taught to think from a young age; “fat = unhealthy” is the mainstream message. It’s only when you take the time learn that this messaging is deeply flawed and actually only serves to worsen the health of people at higher weights, that you start to recognise the damage that weight stigma has on the world. This includes any of your friends, family, colleagues who are struggling with their body shape or size.

If you’re keen to learn more, there are tonnes of books out there, but a good place to start is with Aubrey Gordon’s books

What we don’t talk about when we talk about fat
or
You just need to lose weight and 19 other myths about at people

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

23/09/2025

Eating less to lose weight tips the body into starvation (or famine) mode.

Your body was carefully designed to survive famine.

When you eat less to lose weight your body responds by making less leptin (fullness hormone) which can cause you to feel hungrier throughout the day and when you do eat, you need to eat more to feel you’ve eaten enough.

Your brain will also increase the action of a chemical called Neuropeptide-Y to make you think about and go in search of food - especially carbohydrate rich food.

So if you feel you can’t resist food when you’re hungry, or you can’t control the amount you eat when you have food in front of you, this is NOT a lack of will power or self control - this is your biology driving you to eat. This is called being a successful human.

The good news is, you don’t need to try and lose weight to take care of your health, there is another way. It’s called a size inclusive health approach (SIHA or HAES) and uses a non-diet or intuitive eating/attuned eating approach.

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

22/09/2025

Why?��It promises weight loss but rarely delivers without eventual regain; and you always blame yourself when it’s the diet process itself that is largely responsible.

It promises happiness but most often traps you in a cycle of feeling a sense of success and then a sense of failure. Over time it makes you feel more and more shame around food and your body.

The good news is there is an alternative, you can escape diet culture and no you don’t need to use the weight loss medications to do this.

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

19/09/2025

Just a little Friday reflection as we go into the weekend - we hope everyone has the opportunity to enjoy whatever food they feel like with friends and/or loved ones!

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

16/09/2025

While nutrition has importance, our culture tends to over emphasise nutrition to the detriment of what it really means to feed ourselves well. Perhaps even more problematic is how the nutrition focus can take away from the pleasure of eating and sharing food with others.

If you’re finding eating well feels like a chore, punishment or just too hard and not maintainable, then perhaps it’s time to explore a different approach and perspective with a non-diet approach to health and well-being.

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

14/09/2025

Recovery from an eating disorder requires increased intake of fat, sugar and carbohydrates in some way shape or form.

Yet the world keeps telling people to lose weight and eat less fat, sugar and carbs.

Something here just doesn’t add up.

If you are concerned you may have an eating disorder, or be at risk, or are worried about someone else, click https://butterfly.org.au/ or https://eatingdisorders.org.au/ to start to understand more.
*Risk factors listed on these sites.

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

11/09/2025

Restrictive eating is also the no. 1 risk factor in developing an eating disorder.

Over the years I’ve had many clients express how following a healthy eating program, gym challenge or even advice from a health professional started to mess with their psychology around food and their eating behaviours.

If you choose to restrict food for ethical, environmental or religious reasons, or if you need to for a medical diagnosis (eg Coeliac), then of course that is ok. I am talking about restrictive eating to change how your body looks or for perceived health reasons without medical necessity.

If this description of disordered eating is you, or someone you know, can you reflect on how this is really impacting your health? Is it enriching your life, or is it getting in the way of what you really value - your relationships with others and/or doing the things that you really enjoy in life?

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

10/09/2025

Years of dieting/trying to lose weight teaches people that feeling hungry is a sign of weakness and resisting hunger is something to be commended or admired.

I’ve had people describe feeling “holier than thou” if they can resist their hunger and only eat a set amount of food.

In the short term this may lead to weight loss, but in the long-term this leads to feeling like a failure for not always being able to resist hunger, and then feeling out of control around food, bingeing behaviour and a messed up relationship with food.

Clients often tell me how liberating and empowering it is, in being given the permission to eat.

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

09/09/2025

You can choose to change your behaviours, but you can’t choose how much weight you lose (or even if you lose weight). As humans we just don’t have direct control over this.

For many people, changing behaviours can benefit health regardless of weight changes. But when our culture places so much emphasis on weight loss as the goal, the thing we “pin the medal” on, those changes in behaviour can get lost or overlooked as the real reason you are feeling better and your health has improved. ��And when people don’t lose the weight they thought they “should”, it’s so normal (and understandable) to feel demoralised and like a failure, sadly people may even stop the behaviour changes that made them feel better.

Humans do not fail at losing weight, simply because it’s not within our immediate control. As the saying goes “people don’t fail diets, diets fail people”.

Why then is the message to lose weight the predominate message?

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

05/09/2025

Despite the BMI scale being well known to NOT be an accurate measure of health, it is still widely used.

Many clients come to us with the belief that if their BMI is above 25 and especially above 30, they are somehow damaging their health; even when their bloods are good and they have no health conditions. Often these people have tried all the diets, lost weight and regained only to end up heavier. For those with increased risk factors, the pressure to lose weight and our culture’s weight stigma can often mean their eating behaviours have been damaged through dieting. The increased shame that comes along with this also prevents them from being more active. ��It’s almost like the very people our health system are trying so hard to help, are actually being harmed.

In my 20+ years of practice I have seen hundreds of people with BMIs in the 30s (and 40s) whose blood tests are excellent, they are active enough and they eat well enough. If anything is damaging their health, it’s our culture’s weight stigma and constant pressure to lose weight. Of course some people with higher BMIs have high cholesterol or blood glucose, but so do some thin people!

Zoe & Kerrie - NonDiet dietitians and food lovers!

03/09/2025

This belief comes from the many people I have worked with who have ADHD.

I am aware there is a conversation around ADHD and the capacity to practice intuitive eating and I have been a little reluctant to write about this as I don’t see myself as an expert on ADHD. But recently a follower asked me to write about it, so here we go. Please feel free to share your thoughts, feelings, experiences, especially if you have ADHD and your experience is different to what I’ve written about here.

Most of what I understand about neurodiversity and intuitive eating I have learned from my clients.

What I have learned;

That many people with neurodiversity can learn to notice their hunger and fullness cues. It make take a little longer and require some practical strategies, but it is possible.

For those who really struggle to connect with or notice their hunger, understanding that you don’t need to feel hungry (or feel hunger cues) to choose to eat can be very helpful. I use the concept that of you haven’t eaten for ~3hours there is room for petrol in your tank concept. Reminders to eat may be necessary.

What clients have told me they’ve learned from the IE process that has been super valuable…

Hunger cues are not just coming from our stomach. If you feel headachy, tired, irritable or just out of sorts, that may be your signal that you need to eat. Experiment with eating something, this can be anything, and if you start to feel better mentally and any headache subsides, then you needed fuel! (note: this is also true for people without ADHD)

Your food choices can be very plain and simple (sometimes referred to as beige food) and you don’t need a wide variety of food or lots of veggies to eat well enough.

Any food is better than no food.

Address

Melbourne, VIC

Opening Hours

Monday	12pm - 8pm
Tuesday	2pm - 8pm
Thursday	8am - 4pm
Friday	8am - 4pm

Telephone

0419585415

Website

http://www.lovewhatyoueat.com.au/

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